Adanacp

IronRuby Resources

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 03:03:11 GMT

This is a blog post that will be updated over time. It's intention is to collect the best IronRuby resources on the web, so feel free to leave a comment and let me know of additional resources you would like to see listed here.

http://www.ironruby.net - in particular the Frequently asked questions section tells you how to obtain the code, build it, and contribute to the project, also has samples
http://rubyforge.org/projects/ironruby - The IronRuby project on RubyForge
http://www.iunknown.com - John Lam's Blog - admin of the IronRuby project
http://blog.prokrams.com/ - Michael Letterle's Blog - contributor to the IronRuby project
http://adanacp.spaces.live.com - This blog ;)
http://www.codeplex.com/sdlsdk/ - Silverlight Dynamic Language SDK (to allow you to code IronRuby or IronPython in a Silverlight environment)

Specific IronRuby related links:

Getting the source, building the project and running an IronRuby Program - Michael Letterle
Tools required to use IronRuby with Silverlight (and some simple demo code) - this blog (make a path to chiron.exe and run "chiron /b" on the folder containing the demo code, this will launch IE with the demo in the browser)

Inspired By

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:49:47 GMT

I was tagged by Josh Holmes in his Inspired By blog post. My reply to this tag is a long time coming. This is due to the fact that there is just so many people in the developer community that truly inspire me.

I am inspired by people that give back to the developer community. The people that openly share experiences and make it a point to improve the knowledge of fellow developers. These people take time out to genuinely help people reach their goals in their career, they also help feed the curiosity for them to try new things in technology. These people are (in no particular order):

Bloggers - who openly share their development experiences with others, so that they may avoid similar pitfalls, solve problems and apply techniques/technologies that are successful in their problem-space.
Screencasters - who show hands-on exactly how their technology of choice can be applied visually. The benefits of this is that a single screencast can be created once and be reachable to any developer.
Speakers/Presenters - who spend countless hours and sleepless nights perfecting the delivery of a session that will help developers understand and apply the topic at hand.
Event Organizers - who also spend countless hours and sleepless nights crossing the T's and dotting the i's to ensure event attendees are provided a comfortable and functional learning environment. They also organize the marketing, speakers and sponsorship so that the event is possible in the first place.
Event Volunteers - usually the people "behind the curtain" ; they work feverishly throughout the event to ensure the event plans are executed without a hitch and help attendees wherever needed.
Event Attendees - the most important piece of the developer community. These are the people who show ambition and desire to learn and improve their trade. They go back to their workplace and lead by example; taking the lessons they have learned and apply the technologies in successful ways (and most importantly share the information with others). These are the people that make the developer community worthwhile.

I know it seems as if I'm dodging the question of who it is that inspires me, so I'll spill it. The first person that had a profound impact on my interest in the developer community is Drew Robbins. I met Drew at a Developer Days event in November 2001. He was actively recruiting members for the Central Ohio .Net Developer's Group here in Columbus Ohio. Let's just say that some day I would hope to match the passion that he has for the developer community. He is the person who encouraged me to get more involved, to get over any fears and just get out there and make a difference.

Ann Arbor Give Camp - Columbus Mirror (July 12th and 13th)

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:12:07 GMT

The Ann Arbor Give Camp is a coding for charity event organized by Jennifer Marsman, Patrick Steele, John Hopkins, Todd Bohlen, Bill Wagner, and Kristina Jones. Essentially it's an event that allows software developers and designers to join forces to develop software and websites for charitable organizations. In all 15 charities were helped.

The weekend started for me on Friday afternoon. I decided it would be beneficial to meet the charity the Columbus group was to support in person. So I packed up (with my youngest child) and headed out to Ann Arbor, and arrived as the Introductions of the charities were taking place. I was able to meet the charity, find out their passions, and learn what their expectations for a new website were. I took this information back to Columbus (not arriving home until after 2am).

Woke up early on Saturday morning and arrived to meet the other volunteers at the Microsoft Offices in Columbus at 8:30am. We all worked well as a team and ultimately started project roles, design and coding very quickly. The day ended Saturday at about 10:30pm. I decided to head home and continue coding as bandwidth was an issue at the offices, and took advantage of the broadband at home until about 1:30am. We all regrouped about 8:30am on Sunday morning and pushed forth until we wrapped things up around 6pm.

Lessons learned are, have fun, no matter what, collaborate as much as you can, listen and learn from others, and sleep really isn't necessary :) ... For future events, I think it would be beneficial to get the requirements at least a week ahead of time, and identify project roles before the marathon design/coding begins.

Pictures of the event

I have nothing but high praises for all the volunteers that came out to make the event a success. Everyone worked extremely hard, and constant (we didn't use the break lounge once). The room was very quiet at times due to the amount of code throughput. Regardless, everyone was in good humor the entire weekend and we all had a blast!

The Columbus Mirror Give Camp Volunteers were:

Myself (Developer, security)
Jonas Phillips (Designer, Graphics Guru)
Matt Nowack (Layout/Developer)
Jeff Blankenburg (Master ASPX creator, Layout contributor)
James Bender (Architect, Developer wrangler)
Phil Presson (Developer)
Steven Harman (Developer)
Mark Deeter (Documentation)

Happy Contribupendence Day!

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:19:01 GMT

This blog post is in response to Contribupendence Day as created by Jeff Blankenburg at Microsoft. The idea behind Contribupendence day is to acknowledge 5 people you know that are respected, appreciated and talented and provide them with internet recommendations. I chose LinkedIn as my social network conduit (only joining it last night). The 5 people I chose are (in first name alpha order):

James Bender

"James is very exemplary in his knowledge of technology. I have seeked out his expertise (primarily surrounding WCF) when dealing with technical problems that I encounter in my work. James is always willing to contribute ideas and solutions, because of this he is very respected in the developer community"

Jennifer Marsman

"Jennifer has an infectious good energy surrounding technology. She is very motivated and always willing to go the extra mile. She is motivated by helping people and organizations to reach their goals. Jennifer is also an advocate for Women in Technology, and as such is an inspiration to us all. She is one of the smartest people I know, and a pleasure to work with."

Justin Kohnen

"Justin is a very driven individual. He is also responsible for helping organizing very successful technical events. He is known in the community to step up to the plate, and is a very good technical speaker (presenter)"

Matt Dinovo

"Matt is a born leader and teacher. When I had the opportunity to work with him, he opened my eyes to the inner workings of ASP.Net and the future direction of the .Net platform. He mentored me on many practical and important patterns and best practices which has benefitted me greatly in my career and in the developer community. Since working with him I have had a passion for all things .Net and much of this is due to some of his enthusiasm for technology rubbing off on me."

Michael Letterle

"I am lucky to have to opportunity to be in contact with Michael. We share similar interests in the IronRuby project on which he contributes. His passion for technology is contagious, and his knowledge is admirable. I also like the fact that he keeps me on my toes with regards to running the newest drops of the IronRuby project. Keep up the good work Michael, I look forward to your presentation at eRubyCon!"

IronRuby, Silverlight, DeepZoom demos Updated for Silverlight 2 Beta 2

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:01:07 GMT

You'll need to uninstall all Silverlight 2 Beta 1 tools, and install the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Chainer (which includes tools for VS 2008, see www.silverlight.net)

Then update your Silverlight Dynamic SDK.

If you are doing Deep Zoom, get the new Deep Zoom Composer.

Here are updated Demos:

Demos 1 - 3

IronRuby Deep Zoom Sample

IronRuby, Silverlight and Deep Zoom (Beta 1)

Wed, 21 May 2008 01:35:02 GMT

This past weekend I had the honor of presenting my IronRuby, the DLR and Silverlight talk at Cleveland Day of .Net. As promised I am posting the Deep Zoom sample that I had created.

One gotcha that you will hit is that during the development, you will be required to add the mime type for the *.bin extension in your chiron.exe.config file by default located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v2.0\Tools\Chiron, add <mimeMap fileExtension=".bin" mimeType="application/x-binary"/> in the mimetypes section.

For the first three demos (gradient rectangle, mirror image, rotating text), access my previous blog post here.

You can download the Deep Zoom Composer here, remember to export as a composition, and if you are using IronRuby you need not bother with the Silverlight project. Once the project is exported, copy the files exported to the assets folder of your Silverlight application. Ensure the xaml of the MultiScaleImage element is pointing to the info.bin file of your composition.

I am planning on putting together some screencasts that will step through applying IronRuby, as well as Silverlight (and Deep Zoom). Stay tuned!

Presentation Slides

IronRuby/Deep Zoom Demo

(first three demos are here: Prior Blog Post )

*** Updated for Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Here ***

Euler Problem No.2 in IronRuby

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:53:34 GMT

Each new term in the Fibonacci sequence is generated by adding the previous two terms. By starting with 1 and 2, the first 10 terms will be:

1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, ...

Find the sum of all the even-valued terms in the sequence which do not exceed four million.

Here is my IronRuby solution (2 ways): or download it here

Euler Problem No.1 in IronRuby

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 21:35:10 GMT

I came across a site that contains mathematical problems that can be solved programmatically. The site is http://projecteuler.net . I thought this was a good site to frequent so that I can learn how to apply my new found love for IronRuby. Running this samples requires that you download and build IronRuby, I also added the location of rbx.exe to my Path environment variable. To run this file type "rbx Euler1.rb" from a command prompt in the folder that contains your source file.

After solving the first problem from Project Euler, I am officially 1% genius :) Here is two solutions that I came up with: or download the file here

Getting Started With IronRuby, the DLR and Silverlight (Beta 1)

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:27:24 GMT

Recently I presented this talk at the Central Ohio Day of .Net. It was an excellent experience, the sessions were all top notch, and the attendees were great! I'm sure to do this again next year. If you missed out, there are other Day of .Net events scheduled in nearby areas, to get a list, you can access the event schedules here. Anyway, as promised, I said I would post my presentation material. Keep in mind, to get started with IronRuby on Silverlight, you will need to download the "beta bytes" of Silverlight 2 Runtime, the Silverlight 2 SDK,as well as the Silverlight Dynamic SDK. You will not be required to pull IronRuby from RubyForge because it is included in the Silverlight Dynamic SDK. If you do decide to pull IronRuby to take a look at it's implementation, you will also need the full-fledged Ruby installed on your machine. It is also recommended that you include the folder that contains Chiron.exe into your path. To run the demos, run in the root folder from the command prompt "Chiron \b", this will run chiron and open internet explorer with your IronRuby/Silverlight program loaded, click on "index.html" to run the demo. Future blog posts will share IronRuby concepts in further detail, stay tuned!

Presentation Slides (sorry, forgot the war kittens)

Demo Code

(Demo1 - Rounded/gradient rectangle, Demo 2 - Mirror image, Demo 3 - spinning text)

** Updated For Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Here **

What makes a successful project ?

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 15:33:20 GMT

In short a successful project is dependent on a successful team.

Project team members need enthusiasm, commitment, and excitement in the final product. The team must be able to work cohesively, constantly challenging themselves to meet milestones and helping people out when they run into trouble. Some ideas to achieve this "glory team" would be to Recognize achievement, Encourage the support of other team mates, Challenge people in a fun but competitive way, and Reward people for a job well done.

A project team blog is a wonderful idea, there could be one main Blog for the project as a whole to communicate status and the overall well-being of the project, each member should then have their own sub-blogs where they can post issues they have run into with their solutions, how they have assisted other people, and overall little tid-bits of interesting things that they have learned. These blogs later on can serve as a sort of knowledge base, that is searchable and thus helps share the tribal knowledge.

Another good idea is to reward people for working as a team. On the project blog, set out daily or weekly challenges to the project team, challenge them to Assist a Teammate and post a comment about this, or a challenge to post the most useful thing that they learned that week, and so on and so forth. Randomly select a winner in each of these challenges and present them with small trinkets of swag and recognition of a job well done.

Why are some people's blog posts so long ??

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 14:55:38 GMT

This entry is really two-fold... It's been a while since I posted to my own blog, but I have been reading certain other people's blogs regularly. I do enjoy the small quick entries, and the middle of the road detailed blog post, BUT... OMG... what's with the 30 printed pages blog entries ? Maybe those should be submitted to book publishers *LOL* !

Anyways, I am trying out this Live Writer product for the first time (yes, I am behind the times). Editing medium to large blog posts is not really what a web interface is built for. Also, it's convenient to compose blog posts while on the go, and not necessarily connected to the web at all times. So let's see how easy this thing is to use, so far so good... now let me click the publish button.....

Weird situation installing Windows Workflow Extensions for VS 2005

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 04:18:26 GMT

Even though this is my third go-around at installing the .NET 3.0 stuff on various PC's, I encountered an issue this evening that confused me royally. I downloaded and installed the Vista Win SDK, the .NET 3.0 framework, and the extensions for WCF/WPF on vs 2005. I then went to install the extensions for WF and it kept bringing up the Change/Repair/Remove screen of the Windows SDK (and ofcourse wouldn't give the option of installing WF extensions, ran a repair for the heck of it and nothing :( ) ... Spent some time searching the net and found this blog post that solved the issue for me... The extensions for WF download as a self-extracting exe file... I simply had to change the extension to .zip and run the setup within the zip. It then installed flawlessly.

The saving blog post

Removing the Calendar Tooltip

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:09:20 GMT

Case: Create a full-screen event calendar that displays the events as a hyperlink, and displays the description of the event when the mouse hovers over the event link.

Issue: ASP.NET 2.0's Calendar control displays a tooltip "Calendar" or "Databound Calendar" when the mouse hovers over the control. Even if you set the Tooltip property to an empty string.

Resolution: This has to do with the title attribute that asp.net sticks in there. In the Page_Load event add the following:

this.CalendarControlName.Attributes.Add("title", string.Empty);

Alternatively you can set the UseAccessibleHeader property of the control to false, but then screen readers would have a difficult time dealing with this.

MVP Summit Arrival

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:42:53 GMT

I made it :) and I am happy to say that my luggage actually arrived with me this time! It is the end of a travel trend for me, where luggage usually arrives 2 days later. The trip was pretty much uneventful, though it was an exruciating long day. What a better way to end it but at the Party with Palermo event. It was at a place called Jilians, and let me tell you the place was packed, you could barely walk around in there. I wonder if it's legal to have so many geeks in such a small space ? I met some people, played a bit of pool, then headed back to the hotel for the night. Unfortunately at the room there was a horrible sound coming from the wind through the window, so I didn't do much sleeping at all. It was VERY noisy, I casually named the thing making the noise George. Maintenance came at about 2:30am to do some tightening of the window, but to no avail, it was quiet for 15 mins. So at 4:00 am this morning I asked for a new room, gladly leaving George behind and grabbing a nap.

Here is some pictures of the events yesterday:

My M&M Personality

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 22:32:31 GMT

I saw on Matt Dinovo's blog that he created an M&M persona... I thought it would be fun to create one too... So those of you that know me will realize that this thing fits me to the T, all the way down to the hockey stick and broken ankle :)

Leveraging Generics in an N-Layer Application

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 02:31:10 GMT

I had a great time last Thursday with this presentation, it was a packed house and there was a very interactive crowd. It's definitely good to have people genuinely interested in the topic being presented, that's why the Central Ohio .NET User Group is the best around!! I think it was awesome that I was the first female presenter, and I can't wait to see the feedback I got on the evals (they left before I did *LOL*), but I think it went very well.

As per request, I am posting a link to the presentation materials here:

Slides

Web Application Project

Codemash Day 2

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 15:50:11 GMT

CodeMash absolutely ROCKS! Each session I attended was excellent. This conference has experienced, down-to-earth speakers. I am very impressed. The keynote sessions were thought provoking and entertaining, the burning man in the desert thing was too cool. The people at the sponsor booths don't hunt you down either, you approach them, and they take a no pressure attitude. Codemash is certainly a conference out of the ordinary in a good way. The Open Spaces idea is great too. I hit the water park today, the roller coaster thing was the best! The slides were good too. I guess the only comment I have is why is it so dark in those tunnels? But hey, you're going fast, and you're getting soaked so what's the difference ?

It is too late to add to the swaglog, but I'll add a picture...

Day 1 at CodeMash

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 04:38:04 GMT

The drive to the Kalahari was pretty much uneventful, except for a little side-road detour the GPS sent us through in Ashland, but all-in all it wasn't too bad, and we did get here just as timely. Heck, we wouldn't have seen that nice house with the awesome lawn and the flagpole had we not taken those township roads!

The Kalahari is pretty impressive, it is big, and you definitely get walking miles here. The waterpark looks awesome, but I haven't gone out yet. I have SO got to try the surfboarding thing, I'll just try not to break my other ankle doing it.

The panel discussion this evening was real interesting, Python and Ruby are touted as the best languages for RAD and for beginners. Webservice transactions, latency and granularity are a big issue in SOA. REST and POX is recommended over SOAP (due to the overhead no huge surprise there).

I haven't gone collecting any swag yet, but the swaglog for the day will show what came in the "swag bag at the giving tree", included in here is the official CodeMash T-Shirt, a bunch of conference sponsor marketing flyers, a real cool notebook & pen from SRT, a sketchbook from APress, a Visual Web Developer Resource Kit CD, a pen from Dundas, a QSI beer cozy, and a QSI retractable ID badge holder. I am stealing the swaglog idea from Brian Prince and his recollections of TechEd last year.

I guess the logic in me is screaming a bit, upon arriving a couple of AEP folks and I helped QSI attach these little metal clips to the lanyards, which hurt the thumbs like ten. Just to see the retractable thing in the swag bag, probably would have been easier to attach those to the lanyards instead, buttons vs. brute force *LOL* ... Oh well Que Sera Sera

After the panel discussion it was on to Kahunaville restaurant and bar, where the 80's music was cranking and the people were gathering. I learned a bunch at this meeting as well, thanks Steve!... I know now that you CAN display and serve Shrimp in the air, and I know the full lifecycle of a Twinkie...

Getting Cell Text from a hidden GridView Column

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 02:06:06 GMT

I hit an issue today while working with the GridView control. I have a column that contains the Wilco RowSelectorField checkbox control, and I needed to collect each checked grid view row upon a button-click event. The problem was that the primary key id value of the row that I needed to perform a database operation was in a hidden column and trying to obtain the cell text of that column always returned an empty string.

Having always used the Infragistics UltraWebGrid control in the past, I had never had this problem before. As it turns out, if you set the visibility of the column itself to false, trying to obtain the cell text from that column will always return an empty string. What you need to do is on the GridView's OnItemDataBound event, set the visibility of each cell individually to false, then it will work like a charm!

e.Row.Cells[0].Visible=false;

CodeMash

Photo Album: MVP Summit - Seattle

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 04:58:44 GMT

MVP Summit - Seattle

snowcappedmountains

partywithpalermo

spaceneedle

undergroundtour - old store

underground tour - old store 2

underground tour - old hotel 1st floor

glass sidewalk underground

glass sidewalk above ground

bill gates keynote

space needle daytime

More Photos...

Photo Album: CodeMash - Day 2

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 15:50:11 GMT

CodeMash - Day 2

Swag log day 2

AEP People

More AEP people

Josh wearing a Jersey so many people want

Drew being Drew

Jennifer and I

The after Party Party

Photo Album: CodeMash Wednesday - Day 1

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 04:38:04 GMT

CodeMash Wednesday - Day 1

Bruceky having a Brewsky

Sandy at Applebees

Part of the AEP crew

The Panel Discussion (dark sorry)

Steve - Oh the Shrimp's in the Air!

Guiness Bottle Bowling

Steve - The Twinkie lifecycle demo

Swaglog day 1

Blog list: Blog list

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:47:57 GMT

Jeff Blankenburg
Local DE